SMN endgame how is it

I am a returning player, and wanting to stick around for good to get into endgame, after trying a few classes I am deciding to go with SMN since It will be easy to move to healing as well.

My question is how is summoner for endgame? I have read about it taking a minute to get through the rotation but imagine with practice it will come with muscle memory?

I think it's great. It's more about managing resources than anything so if you like keeping track of multiple things at once you'll probably enjoy it. Also it's very mobile so mechanics are easy peasy. The main downside is dealing with the pets because depending what you do their abilities might not go off, that takes some getting used to. But the job is likely getting a rework to some degree next expansion so it could change a lot or a little, we don't know yet.

SMN is very divisive among the community this expansion. Some think it's great, others feel like it's been ruined. Typically job changes don't normally elicit such a wide range of receptions from my experience.

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

Typically job changes don't normally elicit such a wide range of receptions from my experience.

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Cf. Astrologian

The job is fun to play, despite controversy. Many of those who I've read lately who don't like it appear to dislike the 'pet' in particular.

I've learned to live with the pet over the years, it's much simpler to deal with now: think 'auto attack' + 3 special spells bound to the GCD.

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Originally Posted by DPZ2

Cf. Astrologian

The job is fun to play, despite controversy. Many of those who I've read lately who don't like it appear to dislike the 'pet' in particular.

I've learned to live with the pet over the years, it's much simpler to deal with now: think 'auto attack' + 3 special spells bound to the GCD.

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The pet doesn't really bother me. Personally, I feel like it's actually not that fun to play mainly because of how disjointed everything feels. None of SMN's tools seem to have anything to do with one another outside of just being on the same hotbar. In contrast, the majority of BLM's spells all have a very important purpose that strings your combo together. Fire refreshes your Astral Fire, Fire III is what helps you swap back to Astral Fire from Umbral Ice, and on the flipside, Blizzard IV is working to give you free Despair/Flare casts, Freeze maxes out your Umbral Ice right away so you can get straight into your combo, and it all feels more cohesive. This is something that doesn't bother everyone, it seems, and so it really depends on the person.

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Originally Posted by Varyntheos

I am a returning player, and wanting to stick around for good to get into endgame, after trying a few classes I am deciding to go with SMN since It will be easy to move to healing as well.

My question is how is summoner for endgame? I have read about it taking a minute to get through the rotation but imagine with practice it will come with muscle memory?

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the rotations are usually rigid , outside proc based classes , so yeah after 1 week u will be mastering SMN , isnt hard ,but u sometimes forgot to cast X or refresh dots because a mechanic happened but oh well u lost some dps here and there is not big deal tbh otherwise dual ranged parties wont make it...

but no class is hard tbh , well nin opener is madness tho

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Originally Posted by Varyntheos

I am a returning player, and wanting to stick around for good to get into endgame, after trying a few classes I am deciding to go with SMN since It will be easy to move to healing as well.

My question is how is summoner for endgame? I have read about it taking a minute to get through the rotation but imagine with practice it will come with muscle memory?

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Keep in mind that when Endwalker drops Sumoner, for better or worse, is going to under some changes.

I used to play summoner in Heavensward, on my old account. When I learned that the summoner lost the pets (they're not pets anymore now, just funky graphical effects for DOTs), I didn't even unlock SMN. Found SCH boring enough as is now, that the faeries are just cosmetic perma-HOTs, ARC is completely ruined IMHO.

Here's hoping that they'll one day introduce something like necro, with actual pets.

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

The pet doesn't really bother me. Personally, I feel like it's actually not that fun to play mainly because of how disjointed everything feels. None of SMN's tools seem to have anything to do with one another outside of just being on the same hotbar. In contrast, the majority of BLM's spells all have a very important purpose that strings your combo together. Fire refreshes your Astral Fire, Fire III is what helps you swap back to Astral Fire from Umbral Ice, and on the flipside, Blizzard IV is working to give you free Despair/Flare casts, Freeze maxes out your Umbral Ice right away so you can get straight into your combo, and it all feels more cohesive. This is something that doesn't bother everyone, it seems, and so it really depends on the person.

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This is why I want Aetherflow back on Summoner. It reconnects elements that were made disparate during Shadowbringers, allows SE to trait upgrade Energy Drain/Siphon into Fester/Painflare, and facilitates flexing Trances around mechanics. It solves multiple problems within the levelling and endgame rotation. To me it’s a no-brainer. But we’ll see what SE actually does.

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Originally Posted by Shironeko_Narunyan

I used to play summoner in Heavensward, on my old account. When I learned that the summoner lost the pets (they're not pets anymore now, just funky graphical effects for DOTs), I didn't even unlock SMN. Found SCH boring enough as is now, that the faeries are just cosmetic perma-HOTs, ARC is completely ruined IMHO.

Here's hoping that they'll one day introduce something like necro, with actual pets.

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Ok, what is an actual pet? What are the defining qualities and then how do you transfer those quality into FFXIV's combat system?

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Originally Posted by Dyvid

Ok, what is an actual pet? What are the defining qualities and then how do you transfer those quality into FFXIV's combat system?

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What we had before were actual pets. They existed in the world and were targetable. One of them was usable as a tank.

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

SMN is very divisive among the community this expansion. Some think it's great, others feel like it's been ruined. Typically job changes don't normally elicit such a wide range of receptions from my experience.

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Yeah, personally I love it right now. I think it's a blast to play... but I do think the divisiveness comes more from people thinking the job doesn't fit their fantasy of what a summoner should be more than anything else. And considering how varied summoners have been in just about every game they've existed in, this is always going to be a losing battle for Square to try to appease. Old school players might think the summons should be big one and done spells while others might think that every single action they take should be executed by the pet, and there's really no middle ground between the two.

As far as the play, I can't speak to you personally... but I was pretty easily able to get the flow of the job after a little practice and now love it for its high damage and high mobility, as well as for having a rotation that's just varied enough to keep it from getting boring. You'll have the occasional time of just casting Ruin 3 for a few seconds, but in general the job has a lot of flexibility and variety of things you're doing to keep it fun and interesting.

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

SMN is very divisive among the community this expansion. Some think it's great, others feel like it's been ruined. Typically job changes don't normally elicit such a wide range of receptions from my experience.

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Heh.. Ruin-ed

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

SMN is very divisive among the community this expansion. Some think it's great, others feel like it's been ruined. Typically job changes don't normally elicit such a wide range of receptions from my experience.

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Which is basically no different from every other expansion. And the main reason is because people want them to do multiple things with the SMN and they all conflict. You have some people who want to keep the useless pets just because they want pets, you have people who want them to give us meaningless pet glamors for them. You have the outright weird suggestions like some people wanting summoner to go back to how it was pre-heavensward, which was basically just an Arcanist with a SMN tag, did not at all feel like a summoner or like an evolved job class with it's own identity beyond reskinned carbuncles.

Then you have people like me who prefer that they continue on with the demi summons that actually make the SMN feel like a summoner rather than an arcanist with a pikachu, letting us use the abilities of the primals which is inline with the actual lore of the summoner in this game. Just change our abilities around for each demi summon phase just like they did with Phoenix. It's the obvious route to go, and the one that works.

Summoner's main problem is that it never ever ever should have been attached to a healer class. It should have had it's own seperate identity from Scholar from the start, they should have NEVER shared a base class. This hindered Summoner's development from the start.

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Originally Posted by Dyvid

Ok, what is an actual pet? What are the defining qualities and then how do you transfer those quality into FFXIV's combat system?

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An "actual" pet, as in concept (seen in other titles) is a separate entity that you need to micromanage movement, health and skill administration, maybe with a level of customization on what they do.

Which right now the only thing that SMN checkmarks in that is the fact that is a separate entity from the caster that deals damage automatically. You don't need to command it around, you don't need to watch their HP, and their actions - despite the onus of lagging due to being "fired" from another entity - are ingrained to the SMN's GCDs.

I'm not mentioning this to say they are bad pet designers. They surely know what exacly a MMORPG pet gameplay means, however pets are just not compatible with how the combat engine works right now, and that's why they lost their "pet flavor" across 3 expansions. I don't know how this code works, so I'm at a loss on how to suggest anything to transfer those qualities without making the job even clunkier.

So, also in response to the person before, it's kind of hard to think about any other "pet jobs" being introduced to the current combat system as it is, unless they overhaul their combat engine, which is probably not happening for Endwalker, at least. To be honest, as far as pet flavored job goes, I find much more likely for a Beastmaster or Puppetmaster introduced as a limited job that explores a separate pet combat system rather than another pet user added to the regular jobs.

My hopes for the expansion, since they are most likely keeping the egis (Benchmark trailer), is to remove Egi Assaults and Devotion from them and convert those into actions from the Summoner themselves, and treat the "pets" just like the glorified dots they are now, and have the active egi change some of the caster actions, like a stance.

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Originally Posted by Raikai

An "actual" pet, as in concept (seen in other titles) is a separate entity that you need to micromanage movement, health and skill administration, maybe with a level of customization on what they do.

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Okay, lets break down FFXIV Egis based on your design requirements and how they relate to FFXIV battle structure.

1. Lets tackle movement and health first since they go hand in hand. FFXIV battle design is built around dodging and it's very hard as well as time consuming to command your pet to move out of the AoE all the time, we first had that in 2013 and didn't work out well. Slowly pets started taking less and less damage because of this until the devs decided it wasn't really necessary to take damage considering how Demi mechanics worked; fresh egi is summoned after Demi phase.
   
2. Skill Management: Egi Assault check the box there, doesn't it? You are commanding the pet to perform an ability. Now I can't say if it's faster now than clicking skills pre 5.0 but you can't just leave them on auto pilot anymore. Egi Assault make you command your pet which is what people wanted.
   
3. Let's talk about our tank pet though if we could and why it didn't work from the start. It was only good during solo situation because it's enmity was so low, it couldn't even manage to pickup adds if the tank died. Couple that with losing Egi when a Demi is summoned, you can see the writing on the wall that Egi Tanks days are numbered. I think getting a good shield is a nice trade off considering I can enter Demi Phases without any worries now.

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Originally Posted by Dyvid

Okay, lets break down FFXIV Egis based on your design requirements and how they relate to FFXIV battle structure.

1. Lets tackle movement and health first since they go hand in hand. FFXIV battle design is built around dodging and it's very hard as well as time consuming to command your pet to move out of the AoE all the time, we first had that in 2013 and didn't work out well. Slowly pets started taking less and less damage because of this until the devs decided it wasn't really necessary to take damage considering how Demi mechanics worked; fresh egi is summoned after Demi phase.
   
2. Skill Management: Egi Assault check the box there, doesn't it? You are commanding the pet to perform an ability. Now I can't say if it's faster now than clicking skills pre 5.0 but you can't just leave them on auto pilot anymore. Egi Assault make you command your pet which is what people wanted.
   
3. Let's talk about our tank pet though if we could and why it didn't work from the start. It was only good during solo situation because it's enmity was so low, it couldn't even manage to pickup adds if the tank died. Couple that with losing Egi when a Demi is summoned, you can see the writing on the wall that Egi Tanks days are numbered. I think getting a good shield is a nice trade off considering I can enter Demi Phases without any worries now.

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1. You're right, my point was that this movement managing mechanics can't be translated well into XIV's combat. And not just about them taking damage, but swapping targets is part of that micromanagement too, and it is a nuisance when the SMN has (had?) to do in XIV.

2. Egi-Assault - seems - to do, but in my point of view is more of a faux thing, because it's a spell that affects your flow (GCD), even though it is launched by the pet. Visually it feels like is a pet action, but in practice it works more like a SMN action that has a pet component to it. To be fair, it felt much less like that when it was an oGCD, but it had other issues though.

3. I agree that the tanking egi didn't work. Seems they didn't care a lot about Titan when they were designing the Demis, given the fact that the tank usability was so niche. It would be okay if the Demis didn't despawn the egis, but I'm not sure if that is because of the combat engine/code.

To note, I don't mind Egis, but they are in a some sort of weird middle point between a pet and the so called "glorified dot". I wish they either went to one or the other side of the spectrum... The pet side is unlikely due to it requiring technical overhauls.. the other side (that is even beyond the glorified dot thing) means a complete overhaul that makes the creatures tied to the SMN's spell animations/SFX. That seemed more plausible, but I had the impression that during the benchmark trailer, the Ifrit-egi still happened to be its own entity, so I'm not quite sure how it will turn out to be.

Also, to add to my previous post, the idea of a "pet job" to me entails into other 2 things, from all the other MMOs I've played with pets:

a) At low skill levels, is a beginner friendly class, because the team play, even if flawed and sub optimal, increases your survivability
b) At the skill ceilings, it's a class that (in theory if well balanced) rewards players that can multi task between them and the pet

XIV's iteration of pets right now doesn't fill either of those.

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Originally Posted by Vallhallix

Summoner's main problem is that it never ever ever should have been attached to a healer class. It should have had it's own seperate identity from Scholar from the start, they should have NEVER shared a base class. This hindered Summoner's development from the start.

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This isn't really a problem any longer. If you look at the Scholar kit, there's only skill now that Scholar takes from the base Arcanist class, and that's resurrection. Even skills they both share in name, Scholar's version is technically different (even if the potencies and animations are identical) because they're all listed as Scholar job abilities. I do agree that it made things a massive pain for the developers in trying to make the jobs work for a long time, but they can now more freely create distinct identities for the two.

I now just wish they'd make the break permanent, and make Scholar a job that you can just unlock once you get any job to level 30, and starts at level 30 with no base class (and yes, that means you'd have to level the two separately)

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Originally Posted by Raikai

1. You're right, my point was that this movement managing mechanics can't be translated well into XIV's combat. And not just about them taking damage, but swapping targets is part of that micromanagement too, and it is a nuisance when the SMN has (had?) to do in XIV.

2. Egi-Assault - seems - to do, but in my point of view is more of a faux thing, because it's a spell that affects your flow (GCD), even though it is launched by the pet. Visually it feels like is a pet action, but in practice it works more like a SMN action that has a pet component to it. To be fair, it felt much less like that when it was an oGCD, but it had other issues though.

3. I agree that the tanking egi didn't work. Seems they didn't care a lot about Titan when they were designing the Demis, given the fact that the tank usability was so niche. It would be okay if the Demis didn't despawn the egis, but I'm not sure if that is because of the combat engine/code.

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1. I still multitask my pet depending on the situation. I've been know to hot swap from Ifrit to Garuda during add phase if the AoE boost is warranted. The only issue I currently have is that Ifrit, not summoner, needs a dash attack to close the gap.

2. I mean it was oGCD and people complained because the speed was too fast and Egi missed attacked due to server lag (1.5s to 2s is the delay I clock from EA to pet execute.) Now I don't agree with Ruin IV being tied to EA and prefer the pet's ability to speak for it self.

As for glorified DoT, sorry but all pets are pretty much this. Look at WoW's Imp. It's basically on auto pilot the whole time much like pre 5.X Ifrit. In fact the only reason Garuda wasn't set to auto was to link Contagion to Trance/Demi Phase. Sorry but in my opinion, Summoner has pets.

Well according to the benchmark trailer, we are going to re-learn summoner, since it seems they are moving in the direction of an Invoker; like SMN using Ifrits Fire Dash as gap closer.

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Originally Posted by Dyvid

Keep in mind that when Endwalker drops Sumoner, for better or worse, is going to under some changes.

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Lest we forget. I imagine they'll remove pets entirely and make them some kind of temporary summon instead of something glorious like what we used to have BEFORE 5.0.
I really miss being able to tank through my Earth pet and rotate between ranged and melee dps depending on what's happening.

It seems like most of the job changes they make anymore reduce what we've already got for no reason. Instead of making things better they actually make things less fun to play.
Don't even get me started on the Scholar... what a damn disaster. Very few thing 5.0 is better than 4.0 or earlier. Sure, it's a functional healer--but it's boring as heck to play!

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Originally Posted by abesut

Well according to the benchmark trailer, we are going to re-learn summoner, since it seems they are moving in the direction of an Invoker; like SMN using Ifrits Fire Dash as gap closer.

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Doesn’t mean it’s becoming an invoker. We saw one skill. Doesn’t mean one thing. Plus it was probably a very old build. Allot could of changed. So we know nothing. The devs are keeping summoner changes highly secret. They didn’t show much at all.

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

SMN is very divisive among the community this expansion. Some think it's great, others feel like it's been ruined. Typically job changes don't normally elicit such a wide range of receptions from my experience.

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Its been like that since heavensward though, the issue as i see it is you have 2 camps. 1 that kinda like the itinteration of summoner in XIV and others who just want a traditional FF summoner. I think because of this over the years the adjustments have made summoner into a convergence of multiple systems and ideas that alone are pretty good, but matched togther is a stack of cards that can function, allbeit while being slightly clunkly. I kinda think what SMN needs is a realignment of some of those systems, and removal of others while re-affirming the class identity into a singular focus. This has been happening over the years, as dots become less and less relevant and every attempt at making them so, ends up being undone. I think its close to the point of whatever they do, not everyone will like it, so they should just chose a direction and stick with it (evoker > trance to demi seems to do this they just need to adjust it from 3 systems into 1) But then ive mained it since ARR Beta. Its always been fun and rewarding to me.

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Originally Posted by Truen

I really miss being able to tank through my Earth pet

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i genuinely don't understand why so many people bring this up. you would rip hate off of titan if you did so much as crit a dot tick. like topaz was decent when you were just an arcanist i guess but if you were remotely competent as a SMN you were already destroying titan's enmity generation within just a few levels of even unlocking it, let alone as a geared lv70 player.

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Originally Posted by abesut

Well according to the benchmark trailer, we are going to re-learn summoner, since it seems they are moving in the direction of an Invoker; like SMN using Ifrits Fire Dash as gap closer.

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I am very curious about that move to be sure. I can't think of much of a reason that as a summoner I would actively WANT to dash into melee range, except maybe just to be there for stack mechanics? But if they attach damage to the dash, then you're going to end up with a caster that just wants to always sit in melee range since you don't want the animation lock for doing the dash nor would you want to deal with moving back while trying to cast (assuming egi assault and ruin 4 also get changed)

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Originally Posted by domovoi

i genuinely don't understand why so many people bring this up. you would rip hate off of titan if you did so much as crit a dot tick. like topaz was decent when you were just an arcanist i guess but if you were remotely competent as a SMN you were already destroying titan's enmity generation within just a few levels of even unlocking it, let alone as a geared lv70 player.

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It was nice for holding extra mobs, that's about it. I like the shield much better, it has a lot more applications and works when Bahamut or Phoenix are out. I've never been a fan of pets though, some people like the fantasy of pets that can hold their own.

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Originally Posted by wereotter

I am very curious about that move to be sure. I can't think of much of a reason that as a summoner I would actively WANT to dash into melee range, except maybe just to be there for stack mechanics? But if they attach damage to the dash, then you're going to end up with a caster that just wants to always sit in melee range since you don't want the animation lock for doing the dash nor would you want to deal with moving back while trying to cast (assuming egi assault and ruin 4 also get changed)

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Other than stack mechanics there are donut aoes, getting in range for heals, moving out of aoe circles, or as an assist in moving across a room. If it deals dmg it'd have to deal more than alternative options or be ogcd to justify using on cd which imo would be silly though RDM has to deal with that (which is still silly) so maybe. If SMN keeps its instant casts it'll have no problem moving around, I'm more worried about how it'd clash with mechanics.

You want do deal with brain-dead pets and ghosting your group damage buff?
Welcome to SMN

I was trying to keep the theme with my "Rydia" toon and do SMN/SCH, but it was so boring to me (especially SCH) that I switched to AST the second 8 could play the class.

I wondered why my supposedly tanking yellow pet never actually held aggro with anything. Now it makes sense.

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Originally Posted by Tulzscha

Other than stack mechanics there are donut aoes, getting in range for heals, moving out of aoe circles, or as an assist in moving across a room. If it deals dmg it'd have to deal more than alternative options or be ogcd to justify using on cd which imo would be silly though RDM has to deal with that (which is still silly) so maybe. If SMN keeps its instant casts it'll have no problem moving around, I'm more worried about how it'd clash with mechanics.

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Typically I'm not so far out of rang that I miss heals, unless a white mage wants us all holding hands so they can use Cure 3, which basically follows the same as a stack mechanic. But sure for the donut shaped AOE attacks. Either way, I just hope that it's a movement still ONLY and not something they attach damage to. If they make it something that is in the same vein of shoulder tackle/spineshatter dive/plunge/corps-a-corps.... it will end up something you must use on cooldown else you're losing DPS, and it looses some of its viability as a movement skill.

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Originally Posted by domovoi

i genuinely don't understand why so many people bring this up. you would rip hate off of titan if you did so much as crit a dot tick. like topaz was decent when you were just an arcanist i guess but if you were remotely competent as a SMN you were already destroying titan's enmity generation within just a few levels of even unlocking it, let alone as a geared lv70 player.

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i liked having titan tank for me, too, and i always knew exactly how far i could go in order to have it maintain aggro. titan was for when you wanted safety, not speed. look at the summoner class quests, for example. those are designed with a tank titan-egi in mind, they'll rip you a new one if you do them without grossly overgearing them now.

I used to main SMN ever since I started the game and continued playing until 5.1, SHB SMN never sticked with me, felt lackluster and clunky in comparison to what it was prior. Give it a shot, you may like it and end game dmg is very good, honestly there's not a bad class ig, it's just what you like playing.

I for one like it, it does require more practice than say RDM as I swear I always forget a skill or two and SMN being initiative that skill usually is linked to another which results in hardy dps loss, example being Energy drain every time! Or aetherpact or Enkindle that one time and almost always deathflare.

I love it, and probably is my favorite caster atm, it has the pet ghosting issue all pet jobs have and can be overwhelming if your new, but it’s a good time personally